Farming Instead of Mining: R&C@CAC

Chronus Art Center (CAC) is pleased to present Farming Instead of Mining, the outcome exhibition of the Research & Creation (R&C) @CAC Project. The exhibition will open on March 15, 2025, and remain on view until May 12, 2025.

We are increasingly aware of the steep energy costs behind a system with boundless generative potential. From the massive electricity consumption and carbon emissions required to support large language model platforms, to the billions of gallons of water needed to cool servers in data centers, and the e-waste shipped to peripheral areas of the global political-economic arena, all reflect the dominance of technological capital platforms over non-living resources, namely land, minerals, and water bodies, expanding in the pace of arms race. On the other hand, as a critical resource in AI development, internet data has been intentionally severed from everyday narratives and personal rights since the early 21st century. Data, filled with traces of life and memory, is treated as a social means of production for system optimization. Terms like “data mining,” “data prospecting,” “data drilling,” and “data cleaning” further imply an extractivist narrative and mentality threading the relationship between technology and the planet. Farming Instead of Mining examines the tensions between industrial agriculture and alternative farming to propose creative alternatives to the current AI development pathways and their underlying extractivist epistemes.

As the initial outcome of the project, Farming Instead of Mining_Strategy Matrix 1.0 is a card game that transforms CAC Project Space into an incubatior for collective intelligence. Players take on roles including a technology company, hacker, Huangtian Houtu, digital laborer, policymaker, user, and AI entity, drawing cards from two decks–one containing digital technology elements and the other featuring reciprocal agricultural theoretical and practical knowledge–to create strategies for tackling to a series of natural, economic, and social crises emerging from AI development. Meanwhile, as the game is played throughout the exhibition, an AI entity will continuously accumulate, analyze, and learn from players’ strategies, gradually forming an unique narrative game-based knowledge system that serves as a diverse and open-source toolbox for addressing complex social, technological, and environmental challenges. Through the cyclical process of “player-strategy-AI feedback,” Farming Instead of Mining_Strategy Matrix 1.0 weaves the power of ficiton with the entangled reality embedded in planetary-scale computation.